Afterimage
by Fairy.Kai
Summary: The memoirs of Bellatrix Lestrange... as told by me, Lily Luna Potter. To a crowd of disbelieving, prejudiced adults, who actually believe that a war like the last will never happen again.
1. Chapter One: Innocence

**A F T E R I M A G E**

**Chapter One: Innocence**

"_The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time"_

- William Butler Yeats

"Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Miss Lily Potter, Head Girl of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

The crowd clapped. My family cheered.

They were cheering for me. They were clapping and calling for me. The Great Hall of Hogwarts was alive with the sound of my name. There were ministry officials, prominent society members, students, families... everyone I could think of. Headmistress McGonagall had even performed an enlarging charm on the ancient room, just to fit them all in.

I found myself afraid, standing in front of nine hundred and twenty-two people.

Not of how I would be received; I had did not doubt that I would face certain resentment and disgust for what I was about to do. I knew that, for some time, I would be hated within these halls.

But I, Lily Luna Potter, would be remembered for this day.

The day the youngest child of Harry Potter spoke out against everything we stood for twenty-nine years ago. The day the world stood still and listened as the famed daughter of the Hero spoke about the injustices our own side committed. About the misjudged and mistreated life of Bellatrix Lestrange.

They would remember me for my understanding of someone who the majority of people deemed the most evil woman to have lived. They would recall my empathy, they would recall my ability to see past this facade we have thrown up.

Because, once more, the wizarding world was heading in the direction of a war. And with one speech, I knew I could stop it.

I didn't need to be a hero, like my dad. I didn't need to be a well-known Quidditch star, like mum. I didn't need to be a goofy sidekick, like Uncle Ron, or a bookworm, like Aunt Hermione.

I just needed to speak; to show people how to understand. They just needed to understand.

And Bellatrix Lestrange was going to help me show them.

* * *

_The night air was cool against my skin; I fought for breath. My fingers tightened around the hand of my dearest and last-surviving friend, Hazelya Dolohov. Her raggedy gasps for air were becoming sparser. I knew that the spell they had hit her with was starting to take its toll. I knew that I must get her to safety. I glanced down at her bleeding, pregnant stomach as we ran. No... This couldn't happen to us. Not again._

"_Come on," I encouraged her in the barest of whispers. "Keep running."_

"_I can't... breathe!"_

_My steel eyes tightened, but I didn't respond. This forest was endless, or so it seemed. I had thought that we only went a few miles from the Dolohov Estate. Obviously, I was wrong._

_I hated being wrong._

_And this mistake was likely to cost both of our lives._

"_The Aurors," my terrified friend gasped in panic. Her hands were clutching her bleeding stomach, trying to hold in her life-liquid, and protect her unborn baby. "They're right behind us!"_

"_Zel, hurry, come on!"_

_Tears were running freely down my friend's sixteen year old face. She shook her head, and her pace slowed. "No, Bella. I can't run anymore..."_

_I swung around, grabbing her arms and trying to drag her. "My baby..." she kept muttering. "My baby..."_

_That deeper, darker part of my mind - the part I sought so desperately to suppress – began to whisper its evil thoughts. _Leave her_, it told me. _The baby's dead anyway, keep going_, it hissed through my head like poison._

"_Zel, we need to keep moving," I breathed heavily, my panting interfering with my oxygen intake. "I can't end up like Evangeline. I can't."_

_Evangeline Rosier, the golden-haired beauty that completed our trio, was violently raped and murdered just last year. By Aurors. Zel and I were there. Their prisoners; the next in line._

_They dragged her to the centre of the room, tore her clothes off and raped her in front of us. Then they killed her. I saw the whole thing. At the age of fifteen, my life fell apart, and I wholly embraced the Dark._

_For what sort of 'Light' could do something like that?_

_And then those 'saviours', as the muggleborns and blood-filth called them, the Aurors brought Hazelya out next. They assaulted her and raped her. I thought she would be killed, too. Like Evangeline._

_Luckily - or really not so luckily in my opinion - our families, the Death Eaters, burst in at that point. The Aurors were murdered, and justly so. Zel's life was saved and I remember her crying in the arms of her fiancé, Nikodemus Nott._

_About a month later, just after our sixteenth birthdays, we discovered that Zel was pregnant to one of those bastards. She was shattered; I have never seen my friend so wholly undone, not even the night after her rape, which she spent in my bedroom at the House of Black._

_That was seven months ago. _

_I was now a Death Eater in training, one of the first females to truly turn evil under the reign of the Dark Lord. Zel had a difficult decision to make and the result ... the baby is due in a month. Nik decided to stay with her, and marry her afterwards. He wanted to be that baby's father, to everyone's great surprise, and Zel's joy._

_But now... It looked like it was about to turn foul._

_I could not convince Zel to keep going. _

_The curse the Aurors had hit her with was well-aimed. Her stomach, upon further inspection as I knelt down beside my friend, was lacerated with deep cuts. I hissed in displeasure; neither of us had our wands. Zel didn't even bother carrying one – women in their last trimester or whatever couldn't perform magic anyway. It was dangerous for the baby. And I had been disarmed long ago; it was the spell that alerted us to the Auror's presence._

_I glanced back at my friend. Zel was sitting in the snow, crying and rubbing her belly, her brown hair sticking to her salty tears. Blood was leaking onto the white ice that lined the path._

_The path._

_A winding path._

_The road to the Dolohov estate. It looked like something from a fairytale; sinister, forbidding trees, the hooting of owls, the soft falling of snow._

_And the eerie silence._

"_Bella," my dear friend gasped. I was kneeling right in front of her, silently protecting her body with my own. She was not going to continue. She was not going to escape this. And I had no way of forcing her. It's not easy to drag a heavily pregnant sixteen year old girl in fear of her (and her baby's) life. _

"_Tell Nik that –"_

_I shook my head. "Oh, hush," I whispered. "There's no need. We're going to be fine. And you know how I hate that cliché nonsense. You love him, he knows that."_

_A faint smile turned up the corners of Zel's mouth. But the image was broken as a dribble of blood trickled out of the corner of her lips. My eyes shuttered in pain for her. She was dying, and Hazelya was tortured by the fact that her unborn child would die with her._

_We had minutes, perhaps even moments, until the Aurors would catch up with us. These were my last seconds with my friend. Zel and I had been best friends since we were three; thrust together from birth. My mother, Druella Black, was a pureblood supremacist. My mother's sister, Dimity Dolohov, had two children, the youngest was Zel. Mum saw my cousin as an appropriate playmate for me and my two older sisters. Andromeda, who was fourteen when I was five, had little time for Zel and me. And Cissy (aged ten) always refused to play._

_We went to Hogwarts when the war began to rise. It did not affect us much; Hogwarts blanketed its students from the outside world. When Narcissa became engaged to Lucius Malfoy (she was in Seventh, I was in First) I was introduced to the idea of evil. I brushed it off. I was content with my pureblood expectancies. I was to marry a rich pureblood and make lots of babies. That was my duty in this world. It did not bother me as much as Narcissa, and when Meda ran away with Ted (who I did not mind, he was a nice enough guy) we became much closer, and I began to understand my beautiful sister, and her fear of being dominated by her future husband._

_Zel rejected the war completely. She was not for it, or against it. She was a pureblood, like me, but not an extremist. She did not care for the extermination of mudbloods and filth, as long as they respected that they were below her. And then she fell in love with Nik..._

"_Bella," she said again. She coughed, and droplets of her blood splattered against my pale cheeks like some morbid rainstorm. I flinched._

"_I'm here."_

_She coughed again, bitterly, and said something. I did not hear her over the loudening cries of the Aurors. I leaned forward. "Tell Nik that –"_

"_No, I don't..."_

_Zel shook her head. "Listen, Bella, tell him that his name is Theodore," she swallowed, her tears like diamonds against her tanned, blood smeared cheeks. "I don't want my son to have a nameless gravestone..."_

_I smiled weakly, playing along. She wanted a moment of semi-happiness before she died, and who was I to deny her that? "Theodore," I breathed, trying the sound out. "What's it mean?"_

_She smiled, her eyes still tear-filled, blood still trickling from her cracked lips. "Divine gift," she managed to choke out before the small patch of forest she had collapsed in erupted into a flame ball of clashing lights and shouting._

_I was blasted back from my friend, crying her name as my back hit a thick oak tree. I think I passed out. My gaze kept going black, and I was hearing snatches of the torture that Zel was enduring._

_I heard her screaming, I heard the sounds of tearing flesh. I heard yells and shouts. I heard their vindictive laughter. And then I heard the most horrifying sound of all... the sound of a crying child._

_I'm pretty sure I blacked out again._

_When I awoke, I was in a warm bed, drenched in blood that I presumed to be Zel's. I screamed. I screamed for five minutes at the highest frequency I could muster until four people filed into the room._

_The first was Narcissa, who flew to my side and instantly began to stroke my hair and ask how I felt._

_The second was a stony-faced Antonin Dolohov, Zel's older brother._

_The third was my cousin, Sirius, who for some reason really didn't like me. Actually, I didn't think he liked anyone with the last name Black. I wondered why he was here._

_And the fourth was Nikodemus Nott. And in his arms was a sleeping baby. I started to cry; having gleaned from the look on his face that Zel was dead._

_My best friend had been murdered by those bastards! I demanded to know and, surprisingly, it was Sirius who gave me the details that I so needed. Cissy and Nik thought it would be better if I wasn't aware of the grisly details of her murder. Antonin didn't speak at all._

_My fury and pain rose with each word my cousin spoke._

_They held her down, magically bound her to the tree, and cut the child from her womb whilst she was still alive. They never performed the killing curse._

_Hazelya Dolohov, my dearest friend and the one person who understood my every thought, feeling and opinion, died from loss of blood and a broken heart._

_I let the hate that had been building for years, the hate that I had unknowingly repressed, consume me like fire._

* * *

"Hello, everyone," I began, swallowing the lump in my throat. I was about to make history. I, Lily Potter, was about to rewrite history, to redraw the prejudice and redirect the hate of the wizarding world. I was about to become a legend, but not quite the way my dad, or Voldemort, ever did.

I was going to change the world, one story at a time.

"What I'm going to show you over the course of today, I am sure many of you would prefer to not hear. I'm sure that many of you won't believe a word. I'm sure that you may hate me once you leave this room. But I can assure you, even though you may hate me, that I speak the truth. And the truth is what binds us."

I smiled tightly, biting down my nervousness.

"You can pretend, if you like, that I am telling you a fairy tale. But remember, every fable and fairy story has meaning, and I pray that you can derive it from this one.

"To start off with, I am going to introduce you to a little pureblood girl, born in 1951, when the first wizarding war was rising. She was raised in the ways of her family. She was taught that duty, honour and blood came first. She was told that in order to be happy, she had to marry a rich, pure-blooded husband. She was content with that fate."

I stared out over the sea of faces. I saw my parents' faces, filled with dulled pride and confusion. I smiled at the regal Narcissa, whom I had met with many times over the past few weeks. She had helped me to write this speech, giving me an intimate understanding of her sister's deepest nature. I saw Scorpius Malfoy and my cousin, Rose Weasley, snuggling up together. I admired them. They truly overcame the adversity that this world was unknowingly faced with, and found a love that everyone was, dare I say it, jealous of.

"This girl was a victim of her upbringing. But more so of her experiences. At age fifteen and sixteen, she saw two of her closest friends murdered. By Aurors. These girls were known as Evangeline Rosier, and Hazelya Dolohov."

There were gasps from the crowd, as the older people recognised the surnames of some of the more famed Death Eaters.

"This girl saw Evangeline Rosier raped and murdered. Miss Dolohov was raped, also, but lived to find out that she was impregnated by one of the Aurors – the people these girls hated more than anyone in the world. The surviving two girls were only fifteen years old. The girl refers, in her diary –"I held up the faded leather book – "to Miss Dolohov affectionately as 'Zel'."

There were looks of disgust on many of the people's faces; they probably thought that Zel, Bella and Evangeline deserved their fate.

"When Zel and the girl, best friends, were sixteen, and Zel's baby was almost due, they were once again attacked by Aurors. Zel was murdered, her baby brutally torn from her stomach and left to die. The girl was spared, miraculously, and the baby boy was rescued. In fact, he is in this room today."

I stared hard at Theodore, who was standing at the back of the room with his young daughter. He was my dad's age, and I had written to him to ask what he knew of his mother. He apparated to my doorstep within minutes of receiving it. Theo was the reason I managed to finish my work. He was my driving force. He gave me the barest of smiles. I did not point him out; he did not need or want the attention.

"These events caused the girl to alter. She developed a mental disease, known to most muggles as Multiple Personality Disorder. This girl changed from the sweet Bella Black –" my audience gasped in horror – "to Bellatrix Black-Lestrange, Lord Voldemort's right hand."

The silence that followed was thick and penetrable.

"Today, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to take you step by step, through the tangled life of Bellatrix Lestrange. A psychotic Death Eater, a sadistic murderer, a lost soul. I am not asking you to sympathise, I could never ask that. All I ask is your willingness to hear me out, and a little bit of empathy."

There were whispers of denial and defiance and I smiled dimly.

"Do you know what, people? You, every single one of you, are the Purebloods of thirty years ago. The supremacists. The bigots. You have no idea of the hate you hold. You are directed once more down a path of destruction and death. I am hopefully going to break that cycle. Before the next war begins."

**AN: A new story! It's only going to be a couple of chapters, nothing major. Yeah yeah I know I know - update Violent Deliverance. But it was calling to me and I couldn't write Violent without getting this out of my head. So, please tell me what you think!! I really wanted to do something unique with Bellatrix... and this is the result.**

**So please review! xx**


	2. Chapter Two: Obedience

**A F T E R I M A G E**

**Chapter Two: Obedience**

"_Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love."_

- Aristotle

I stared hard at the faces around me. My fierce gaze met with the confused stares of my two older brothers, James and Albus. My eyes locked onto Aunt Hermione, who actually smiled in encouragement. I had the feeling that although she disagreed with my understanding of Bellatrix, she knew what I was saying and believed, like me, that others needed to hear it.

I caught sight of the heavily aged Lucius Malfoy, sitting beside Narcissa. He was mumbling to himself, whilst his still beautiful wife hushed him. _Azkaban had destroyed that man_, I thought sadly.

Bella had shown me that loss of mental control and psychosis were worse fates than death. And I pitied Lucius for having to endure it. But I still thought he deserved it.

"Over the next six months," I started again, breaking through the whispers of the audience. "Bella began her Death Eater training. She had already ingrained herself within the Dark Circle before that, however, it was Zel's death that pushed her towards madness. She was consumed by hatred, and became a tool of pure fury for her Lord. When she was seventeen, he placed an advanced variation of the Imperius Curse over her. It was structured as such that it was weak. She was not completely controlled, merely receiving directions in her head that she thought were her own. In her diary over the next nine or ten years, she referred to her instructions from Voldemort as her 'Dark Thoughts'. She thought that they were hers, and she hated her own sadistic nature."

"Then why'd she bloody kill so many people?" someone shouted.

I ignored them and continued, knowing that I would be explaining that in moments. "It was this self-hatred that split her personality, allowing the muggle disease to develop." I held up the diary again. "Over the next two years, there are two entries for each day. One; her darker nature, that of Bellatrix Black, later to be Lestrange. And the Second; the fearful child who witnessed horrible things, little Bella Black, who never really grew up."

I blinked, eyeing the angered face of my father with delicate disinterest. He was furious. I was tearing down everything he had worked so hard for. I was tearing it down because it was wrong. Because I knew that Harry Potter had done the same thing Voldemort had – created fear and mistrust between the societies of the wizarding world.

"She never grew up, really. Bella was trapped behind Bellatrix - a dark, sinister murderer, a cold-blooded killer. She never had the chance to develop; her mind was twisted beyond her own control when she was seventeen. I can't tell you what decision Bella would have made in some circumstances – the torture of the Longbottoms, for instance. I cannot tell you that she would not have done the exact same thing."

"Of course she would have!" someone yelled. "She was a bleedin' lunatic!"

I nodded, accepting his accusation. "She was," I agreed. "But she understood what was happening and had no power to stop it. The diary entries of little Bella, contrary to Bellatrix, the dark one, show the remorse and self-disgust she felt at her own actions."

I raised my chin, and tucked a lock of red hair behind my ear. "Again, I tell you, she was a victim of her upbringing, her experiences and her own tortured mind."

* * *

"_Bellatrix Black," the hissing voice of my master echoed through the darkness._

"_Master," I replied softly, bending to kiss his feet. I had not seen his face; he was robed in a heavy black cloak, concealing almost all his features, excluding his height. And the Dark Lord was very tall._

"_Another Black... oh, this is precious," the snake-like voice chuckled. "Your cousin, Regulus, joined us not long ago, did you know?"_

"_I am aware, Master."_

"_Your initiation has been successful, little Black," he breathed. I could sense the hatred and anger that swirled behind his words. I wondered if I sounded like that. "But tell me one thing. Why did you join? Why do you truly wish to become a Death Eater?"_

_I knew he didn't want to hear the usual tripe. _Muggles are filth and should be eradicated. Mudbloods don't deserve their magic._ I knew he could care less how much I agreed with him. I decided to tell the brutal truth behind my desire to join him. "I want to destroy every Auror as painfully and cruelly as I can."_

_He laughed, further stoking my fury. "Because they killed your dear little friend, am I correct?"_

_My heartbeat nearly stopped, but blood still pounded in my ears like a drum. "Yes, my lord. Both of them."_

"_And what if I said that little Dolohov slut deserved to die?"_

_I leapt to my feet, drawing my wand. "Then I would say that you do too!" _

_He laughed again, and just as I was about to curse him, the Dark Lord pulled out his wand and screamed "Crucio!"_

_Intolerable pain shot through my limbs, burning my ligaments, scraping my bones and scalding my human flesh. I suffered in silence._

_I heard the intake of my Master's breath when he saw my sadistic smile. It lit up my features- a beacon of radiance shining from my tortured body._

_The level of pain increased as he tried to wipe it from my sweat-soaked face._

_Fire._

_Fire in my bones._

_But the grim smile stayed in place. I knew that this curse would be mine. I would use this curse to break people. I would tear their minds and bodies apart with the pain that those Aurors had shown me. _

_Crucio._

_Such a beautiful word. Such a wonderful concept. _

_Unbearable pain._

_My enemies would one day kill themselves, rather than face my wrath. I would make sure of it._

_The Dark Lord removed the curse, and I shakily pulled myself to my knees_

"_Why the smile, little Black?" he hissed. "Do you enjoy pain?"_

_I shook my head. "I enjoy knowing that one day my enemies will feel the same agony that I just experienced."_

_The Dark Lord's toe nudged my knee. "Get up, Bellatrix Damaira Black, Death Eater, and I will show you how to cause the pain you seek."_

_With a grim smile, I got to my feet._

_They would fear me._

_And I would break them._

* * *

I looked around the room once more, my eyes this time falling on those of Professor McGonagall. My Headmistress had allowed me to give this speech. She had, after all, asked me to do something thought-provoking for the Day of Victory.

I took her words at their most honest.

I chose to turn the wizarding world upside down by provoking their thoughts.

I wondered if she regretted the freedom of speech she had granted me.

"Ladies and gentlemen, many of you here today will remember the terror that faced this world thirty and fifty years ago. Many of you have lost loved ones to death, injury and insanity. Do you remember the Dark Mark above your houses? Do you remember the intolerance? The Death Eaters and cruelty? Do you remember the pain of living in an era of unknowns?

"I'm sure you do. I'm sure they are recollections that are difficult to leave behind. And it's because of your memories that I am asking, no, _begging,_ for you to listen to me.

"I don't want my generation, or the generations to follow, to experience such trauma. You have suffered enough for our sake, for the sake of the futures of your children."

I closed my eyes, thinking briefly. Opening my bright green orbs, I carelessly tossed a loose strand of fiery hair over my shoulder.

"But, unfortunately, I see it all happening again. Perhaps not to the extent of the last war, perhaps without such a high casualty rate. But it will happen. Despite our best efforts at forgetting, we are still caught in the grip of intolerance. We are still victims and perpetrators of prejudice. We are still calling for hatred, cheering for it."

My audience was silent. I stared at the looks of disgust and indignation on their faces. I sighed. I wasn't getting through. I raised my arm, and Bella's diary, and flicked it open. I brushed through its pages, searching for the date I had made a note of.

"I'm going to read you one of Bella's diary entries. Please keep in mind that this piece was written by her hidden personality, the suppressed child who abhorred Bellatrix. This is the second entry for Christmas Eve, of 1981.

"_I was afraid today. I had thought that I might be broken today, that finally the cruelty and pain I caused people might split me in half. I saw their faces, scrunched up in agony. They were Aurors, though. Didn't they deserve this? She had needed them to tell me where my Master was. They should have just told her – perhaps Bellatrix Lestrange would have been merciful and just killed them, though I doubted it._

_She did not care for their names, for their lives, but the information is bothering me endlessly._

_Frank and Alice Longbottom, were their names. They were married, fresh out of Hogwarts. They had an infant son, Neville. They had faced my Master three times and lived._

_I remembered the look on Frank Longbottom's agonised face when his wife finally cracked, and began to scream wordlessly, mumbling and muttering. She had been driven insane by the force of Bellatrix's curse. I wanted to tell Frank that I was sorry, I wanted to hug poor, deranged Alice. But I couldn't._

_I was just a part of Bellatrix, after all. A single shard of humanity behind the sadistic torturer._

_Bellatrix, Rodolphus and Rabastan had laughed at the Longbottoms. When the Aurors – curse them! – arrived, they tried to escape. They were unsuccessful. Just before we were sent to Azkaban, I caught a glimpse of Frank clinging to his muttering wife, having joined her in the realm of the insane._

_Pity filled the heart that I shared with Bellatrix, though her twisted emotions did not recognise it._

_I hated her in this moment more than I ever had. I hated myself._

_I, Bella Black, hated myself._"

I closed the worn diary and stared out once more at the sea of faces. My eyes met Professor Longbottom's. His brown orbs were filled with tears for his parents, who had died in St Mungo's many years ago. I had gone to him and shown him the entry when I was writing the speech. I couldn't bring myself to read without his permission.

They were his parents, and I would not subject anyone to such emotional pain without their consent.

He caught my gaze and smiled weakly, giving me a thumbs up. I was surprised at this – Professor Longbottom, my Head of House and Herbology Professor, had cautioned me against speaking about Bellatrix. He had said that no one would listen, simply because of what she did.

I didn't believe him.

I would make them listen.

"Bella regretted that day for the rest of her tortured life," I began. "In every entry after this, for the next seventeen years, she mentions them and prays for their son. She says, _I could never forgive myself, but I hope Neville lives a life in which forgiveness is not needed, in a pure and peaceful world. His beautiful parents deserved that, and so does he. _They are her exact words at the bottom of every page."

"How do we know you didn't write the diary yourself?" someone shouted. "You could have made this whole thing up!"

I was about to respond, when three people stood up: Neville, Narcissa and my father.

Harry Potter glared at the man and ran a hand through his greying hair. "My daughter is not a liar," he stated calmly, as if that settled the discussion.

"It's true," said Professor Longbottom. "She showed me the diary and let me read it. Miss Potter could not have made such details up."

Narcissa simply glared at the man before speaking. For several moments. "I gave my sister's diary to Lily. I received it upon Bellatrix's well-deserved death, as an inheritance. Ashamed as I am to admit, it is all truth."

The three sat down, and I spared them grateful smiles.

"Do you know that, generally speaking of course, the Purebloods back then thought that muggleborns did not deserve magic, and neither did anyone who affiliated themselves with them? I'm sure you're all aware of this belief – many of you suffered for it.

"And now, I regret to tell you, that the good side, the Light, as many call it, considers Purebloods to be evil and cruel. That they do not deserve a position in this new, improved society.

"As Head Girl, I am faced with many strange and confronting situations each day. It always astounds me how much children pick up from their parents. On Thursday, I was on my way to Charms when I came across two Gryffindor boys and a Hufflepuff beating up a Slytherin kid outside the Gryffindor commonroom. They were first years, only eleven years old and when I demanded to know why they were behaving thus, and what the Slytherin had done to deserve such violence. They replied that 'He's a Pureblood git. Mum says they deserve it."

"And I thought to myself, that this child has no idea what his mum meant. Obviously, the mother was thinking about the painful times she has experienced, probably at the hands of Purebloods or Death Eaters, and her anger has been imprinted in her child."

I frowned, considering what I had said. "You know what? When I went to bed that night, I was replaying the event in my mind, and I remembered questioning the first years. I had said, 'What did this boy do to deserve this? How did he provoke it?' I already assumed that he was to blame. And I felt overwhelming guilt because when I got to the bottom of it, it turns out that the Slytherin boy had been on his way to Gryffindor Tower to return one of the boy's quills. It had been left in the Charms classroom."

I paused, letting the scenario sink in. "So, you see, your children are affected by your blind hatred of Purebloods and Death Eaters. It's not wrong for you to hate them, and I would never tell you or try to convince you that it is, because they have wronged many of you greatly.

"But it _is_ wrong to impart such sectarian hatred upon your children. You are exposing them to prejudice and bigotry. Giving them a false sense of justice."

"Who are you to tell us how to raise our children?" someone called out. They didn't sound angry, more amused.

I raised a brow. "Who better to tell you than another child? I'm sixteen years old – a child by law. If I can see this... this _blatant disregard_ for humanity itself, why can no one else? Why can't anyone understand the future effects of your hatred?

"In twenty years, your children, and perhaps your grandchildren may have taken your disdain for past enemies to a new level. They will see them as deserving eradication, they will want to give them death. A new era of war will rise and I think I am right in saying that, despite your feelings on Purebloods and the like, no one wants that. No one wants more blood spilt over a simple issue of intolerance and bigotry."

I wasn't getting through.

They weren't listening.

They didn't understand.

I sighed.

Alright, Bella Black, let's show 'em what we've got...

**AN: Ahh, so we have discovered where Bella's fondness for the cruciatus curse comes from and we begin to see how separate her personalities are. Bella is almost a third party in the torture of the Longbottoms. Please tell me what you think - I love reviews! xx**

**(oh, and special thank you to Schermione for such an amazing, helpful review for the last chapter (: )**


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